Holy crapatini wowzers, of course I was going to write about 2019’s Cats. Look at this fucking nightmare fuel. How could I not do this???
Look at this…
And… Holy shit, Dame Judi Dench? You are an Oscar winner and James Bond’s boss, goddammit!
And the fuck is this? Who is Rum Tum Tugger? Why was he so important and only in, like, a single scene?!?
Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my lovelies. This week, we have a peculiar little exploitation slasher flick from the early days of the gory mass murderer days – Nightmare. There’s a positively interesting story behind this movie. However, this is yet another of those Bizarre TV watches. It is indeed part of the “final six” – the final six films that ran on repeat for several months until the Roku channel disappeared forever.
In the event that you ever watched that channel or curious about these final films, they were (in the order that I reviewed them on this blog up to this point) Werewolf of Washington, Zombie Nightmare, Slaughterhouse Rock, and Doom Asylum. The final film of this grouping, Slumber Party Massacre, will be my special Halloween article, so that’s something to look forward to, I suppose.
I talk about the defunct Bizarre TV because it really is what re-energized me to start this blog up again after I took almost a year and a half off from writing it due to a bad case of fuckititis. If it wasn’t for me watching that non-stop, and for the dearly departed Mistress Rhonda tirelessly providing awesome horror and exploitation, I don’t think I would have been able to jump back into this. So, if you want to blame something for this guy’s thousands and thousands of words of bullshit, I guess you can blame that. Continue reading “Nightmare (1981)” →
We’ve come to the end of Russ Meyer Month here at B-Movie Enema.
Over the last several weeks, we’ve gone from Depression-era Missouri farms to a sexually liberated Canadian girl to go-go dancers with an axe to grind to wild Hollywood hippie parties. So naturally there is only one place left to go… Nazisploitation. This week, it’s the 1976 soft-core sex comedy Up!
This is another of the Meyer-Ebert collaborations, much like with last week’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  After that film and its success with audiences and some critics, Meyer tried his hand a couple more times with mainstream films, but both flopped. He decided he needed to get back to boobs… er basics. Back to basics. He swore he’d never stray away from his formula again. Continue reading “Up! (1976)” →
“This is my happening, and it freaks me out!”
Welcome back to B-Movie Enema’s Russ Meyer Month. We’ve finally gotten to the back end of the month and his 70s features. It also brings us to two features Meyer did with famous Chicago movie critic Roger Ebert. First up, it’s the one the duo is most famous for – Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Meyer and Ebert cranked out a treatment that came to 127 pages in about a week and a half. Ebert completed the screenplay in three weeks. It was intended to be a straight sequel to the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls. Now, here’s where we start in on the rabbit hole that leads to Meyer and Ebert coming in. Continue reading “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)” →
I love how Russ Meyer uses punctuation in his titles.
Welcome back to Russ Meyer Month here at B-Movie Enema. This week, we’re going to venture into X-rated territory for the 1968 drama-satire-softcore porn exploitation classic Vixen! We also travel north of the border to Canada for our story as well.
Vixen! might just be considered one of Meyer’s very best (though I have some commentary to add later). The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times both gave high praise to this film despite its themes and obvious sexploitation nature. However, again, it’s Roger Ebert who maybe says the best, most heartfelt comments calling this not just the “quintessential Meyer film” but that he also talks about how Meyer creates characters. We should already be aware with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Mudhoney that Meyer likes going over the top for his villains and various other stereotypical characters. Ebert calls to the front that its Meyer’s talent in doing that that helps put people at ease seeing their first “skin-flick” and allows people to just have a good time – maybe the only thing Russ Meyer really wanted people to have. Continue reading “Vixen! (1968)” →
Last week, Russ Meyer Month started at B-Movie Enema with Mudhoney, a nice little tawdry tale in the American Plains during the Depression. This week, we pick up a movie that is one of Meyer’s best known – Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
As I mused there, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a fairly well known movie. There are two movies in Meyer’s filmography that probably get the most attention in terms of being trivia answers, but for different reasons. There’s this one that we’re talking about this week for its fun title. The other will be covered in two weeks because of who wrote it.
Curiously, though, as popular as Pussycat is, it was an unusual box office dud for Meyer. Most of his films did fairly well. There was a built-in audience at drive-ins full of horny guys wanting to see big breasted chicks. You’d think none of these movies would fail, but this one did. It wasn’t until later that it gained a cult status. Continue reading “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)” →
Russ Meyer…
The name usually conjures up images of sleazy things happening with buxom beauties and just about everything that someone might call “exploitation” when it comes to 60s and 70s cinema. While it may seem like his movies are full of that sleaze, many note that his films were important in terms of female empowerment and showing women who aren’t just sexually free, but generally more powerful than the men in his films. That said, he would also place his female characters in ordeals that they would have to prove their strength and their ability to overcome the obstacles that they face in his movies. It’s probably true that his films were subversive in many ways that would eventually strike at the heart of a rising feminist movement.
All that and more will be discussed over the course of the next five weeks as B-Movie Enema tackles Russ Meyer Month! We begin with 1965’s Mudhoney… Continue reading “Mudhoney (1965)” →
Not that long ago, I covered the movie The Single Girls which starred Claudia Jennings. Our lovely leading lady is back in a fun little action/exploitation/heist movie this week!
The Great Texas Dynamite Chase comes to us from director Michael Pressman. Pressman is hardly a schlock auteur. He would go on to make the cult classic Boulevard Nights which has been selected to be preserved by the Library of Congress as well as working with comedy heavyweights like Dan Aykroyd (Doctor Detroit) and Richard Pryor (Some Kind of Hero). He’s more recently gone into television directing having done episodes of some Law and Order shows, Blue Bloods, and winning Emmys for Picket Fences.
My point is, this is hardly a flash in the pan kind of filmmaker. And of course, The Great Texas Dynamite Chase would also be released by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. However, it should be of note that this is an exploitation movie that comes with fairly decent reviews. This was praised for being exciting and sexy enough for the drive-in crowd while still being tongue-in-cheek with its comedy to attract the older audiences. I suspect it played better to the Texas and southwest crowd, but found an audience over the years and is truly an exploitation gem.
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